An exceptional document signed by one of the 20th-century’s greatest humanitarians, created in response to efforts to save Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. Jews in Hungary had been subjected to discrimination and anti-Semitic laws. But because of Hungary's alliance with Germany, Hungarian Jews had, until that point, been insulated from the horror experienced by Jews in other parts of Europe. That was to change drastically - Hitler had begun to distrust the Hungarian leader Miklos Horthy and on 19 March 1944, German forces occupied Hungary. In the weeks and months that followed, hundreds of thousands of Jews across Hungary were rounded up, moved into ghettos and forced on to deportation trains. With the help of the Hungarian government, the Nazis deported 440,000 Jews from Hungary in the space of two months - most were sent to the largest and most infamous death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. So in the summer of 1944, Sweden - with US backing - agreed to use its diplomatic mission in Budapest to help Hungary's remaining Jews.

Thirty-one-year-old businessman Raoul Wallenberg came from one of Sweden's wealthiest and most important families - he had no diplomatic experience and had studied architecture at university, but his charisma marked him out. Before Wallenberg's arrival, the Swedish embassy in Budapest was already issuing travel documents to Hungarian Jews - these special certificates functioned as a Swedish passport. The papers had no real authority in law but the Swedes managed to persuade the Hungarian authorities that people holding them were under their protection.

When Wallenberg arrived, he decided that the certificates needed to look more official so he redesigned them. He introduced the colors of the Swedish flag, blue and yellow, marked the documents with government stamps and added Swedish crowns. It was known as a Schutz-Pass or protective pass. This document is one such rare example. Armed with such documents, Jews fell under the protection of Sweden, an officially neutral nation.

Only two decades earlier, Freud reflecting on the budding Psychoanalysis movement prevalent in Hungary and said: “Budapest is well on its way to becoming the centre of our movement.” (Freud, 1918) Yet how quickly that would change, with Hungary seeing not one but two emigrations.

Frau Dr. Geza Dukes was the wife of one of Hungary's forensic lawyers whose specialty had been in the field of psychoanalysis, and who was a member of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society. Our research shows that he became a part of the movement of the second emigration out of Hungary. Although he was one of the fortunate to have received an affidavit from "The Emergency Committee" in 1941 (see below), he chose to remain as long as he could, and lost his life in the Holocaust. We can only speculate that at the time his wife had no way to escape as the Schutz pass offered here was issued to her several years later, in 1944 - when Hungarian Nazis seize power after Horthy asks advancing Soviet troops for an armistice, and the Jews were deported to death camps.

Hungary: The second wave of emigration – 1938-1941

On 13 March 1938, a day after the Anschluss, the American Psychoanalytic Association (APA) established The Emergency Committee on Relief and Immigration (Mészáros, 1998).Committee members represented psychoanalytic associations and institutes operating throughout the US. Among its members were Sándor Radó and Franz Alexander were both originally from Budapest.

The committee set the objective of aiding in the escape and immigration of all its European colleagues by all means possible. This proved to be an even more difficult task since US immigration policy had the opposite aim. What follows is a list of factors that illustrate both the rationale behind this restrictive immigration policy and the forces pitted against the Emergency Committee, which was no more than a volunteer organization. These were forces intensified by the Great Depression as well as by growing anti-Semitism and the fear of the spread of Bolshevism and anarchism known as the “Red Scare”:

In the weeks following the Anschluss, the Hungarian Parliament passed its first anti-Jewish Act (1938), in which it restricted to 20% the proportion of Jews obtaining work in key areas of culture and the private sector (Braham, 1981). This represented a serious warning, a portent of things to come, borne out by the passing of the second anti-Jewish Act in 1939. That law was grounded in the racial distinctions of the Nuremberg Acts and expanded earlier restrictive measures on the private sector – now Jews could no longer be civil servants either. This affected almost 200,000 people.

István Hollós, president of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society, turned to Kubie in a letter dated 9 January 1939 to request help for Hungary’s psychoanalysts (Mészáros, 1998). This letter opened the way for the second wave of emigration.

How did the Emergency Committee work?

The Emergency Committee put out a call for donations among the US psychoanalysts for the following objectives:

1. To aid their colleagues in escaping from the occupied territories. Money that had been deposited in foreign accounts could be used to travel and to cross the border.

2. For immigration to the US. US immigration policy demanded enormous sums of money from those who intended to offer assistance. Sponsors who were not close relatives had to submit a statement of sponsorship, which was an affidavit to the effect that, in the case of a family of four, 5000 dollars had been placed on deposit in a bank account.

3. For the settlement of immigrants. Financial assistance did not represent a donation, but rather a long-term, interest-free loan, which had to be repaid after a few years once a person had established himself. Beyond the financial principle there was an important psychological side-effect to this procedure that cannot be denied: it boosted the self-esteem of those who had recently arrived and prevented the inevitable subordination that accompanied a feeling of gratitude.

Visa applicants eventually took one of two paths: one had those who wished to remain in Europe turning to Ernest Jones; the other saw those who undertook to immigrate to the US sooner or later coming into contact with Kubie and the Emergency Committee.

Emergency Committee documents show that the committee also made serious efforts on behalf of their Hungarian colleagues. In 1941, the following information was made available regarding Hungarian analysts and analyst candidates (Mészáros, 1998, 211-212), that The Emergency Committee had already provided affidavits for Dr. Géza Dukes, Dr. Erzsébet Kardos, Dr. Endre Peto, and it becomes clear that these three were given the green light to immigrate to the U.S.A.

However as mentioned above, many of those who could have left the country chose, for various reasons, to remain as long as they could, and many lost their lives in the Holocaust, including Dr. Géza Dukes, we can only speculate that at the time his wife had no way to escape as this Schutz pass was issued several years later.

Copies of our documented research above will accompany the Schutz-Pass

These priceless lifesaving documents, granting escape from otherwise certain death, were paid for dearly with the life of one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20th century. “When the Soviet army was closing in on Budapest and the other diplomats left the city, Wallenberg chose to remain there in order to protect ‘his Jews’ in any eventuality which might arise. He went to the Soviet headquarters in Debrecyn for that purpose; all trace was lost of him and he was never seen again alive” (Encyclopedia Judaica). Recently at Kestenbaum auction in NYC a schutz-pass in lesser overall condition and signed with "R' sold for $11,000.